


Grief

by rayenbow



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Angst, F/M, Lots of Angst, sorry I'm not sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-06
Updated: 2013-09-06
Packaged: 2017-12-25 18:37:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/956392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rayenbow/pseuds/rayenbow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's lost her not once, nor twice, but three times. And the third time's the charm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grief

**Author's Note:**

> A follow up to Awbrey's follow up, [Destroy](http://archiveofourown.org/works/952568).

He was over a thousand years old now. He’d had many, many relationships, some lasting decades, others lasting only weeks. A good few of them he’d done forgotten about; the details were blurry, faces and names were mangled, dates were switched and mixed in his head, everything was just messy. Not all of them ended badly. He was still friends with some of his exes. Some of them ended terribly, with broken glass and broken hearts. But he never regretted a single one of them, because at some point during the duration of any relationship he was in, he was happy, and that really made everything worth it.

 

Except for this one.

 

Clary had made him happy. She had made him plenty happy, with her cute half-smiles and the way she’d wrinkle her nose when she laughed and the way she loved him, wholly and without doubt, and the way she made him feel so young again, so free, so in love.

 

And then she ended her mortal life, something he still felt was his fault. He thought maybe she’d be okay after they split. She still had Simon, and while immortality had changed her, he never expected it to twist her as much as it had. It had been shocking, stepping foot into Manhattan and seeing the havoc she’d wrecked. He hadn’t known that it had gotten that bad for her. He hadn’t talked to her, hadn’t talked to Simon, hadn’t talked to any of them, really, since the breakup. She’d turned into something that was beyond help. And then he had to end her immortal life, but that was all her fault.

 

Not once through all the relationships he had did he kill someone he once loved. But, well, there was a first time for everything, wasn’t there? Even after a thousand years.

 

He turned away from her before the white light faded, unable to bring himself to see her still and lifeless. Or more lifeless than she already was, anyway. There was a ringing in his ears, his vision spotted, but he didn’t know if it was from the magic or something else entirely. He’d heard of seeing your life flash before your eyes when you died, but he’d never heard of seeing it when someone else died. But that was what was happening, bright and vivid memories cropping up before he had any chance to stop them.

 

He remembered the first time he saw her, a tiny baby wrapped up in a bundle of blankets. Shocking red hair had peeked from beneath a tiny green hat and her cheeks were pink from the cold. He’d seen her as a child, a handsy little thing who liked to grab hair, her mother’s, his own, whenever the opportunity presented itself. As a toddler, she’d chased his cat around the apartment while he spoke to Jocelyn, but as a child, she’d turned to sitting quietly at his coffee table and coloring away on big sheets of paper. She’d always leave her scribbled masterpieces there, and he’d always hang them up on his fridge when she left. He remembered watching her go through phases, pigtails to ponytails to something loose and untamed. Outfits of pink to outfits of black to something strangely hipster and thrift-store. Too-dark makeup to no makeup at all. A girl who clung to her mother’s arm and hid behind her hip to a teenager who stood several feet away, arms crossed defiantly over her chest. There was the time she showed up to his party, flanked by pretty and dangerous Shadowhunters, but the only thing he noticed at the time was how much she’d started to fill out, and how great her legs looked in that dress. Their first kiss, his hands gentle at her waist and her lips soft under his. Their first time, where she’d looked him in the eye, told him she trusted him, and he took the utmost care to make sure she felt like a goddamn princess. All the times they curled up together under the covers, talking in hushed tones and laughing and kissing until they fallen asleep. The times he’d wake up from a nightmare, starting hard enough to jolt her out of her sleep, and how he’d never tell her what he’d been dreaming about, but she’d wrap around him and stroke his hair until he fell asleep again anyway.

 

Then suddenly, the memories turned cold, like a bucket of ice water being poured over him. He remembered the chill of her skin, the stillness of her heart, the unnatural brightness to her eyes. She still gave him little half-smiles, her nose still wrinkled when she laughed, but everything about it was inherently wrong, and the feeling would sit like a weight in his stomach.

 

“ _Magnus_.”

 

He blinked once, twice, and this his vision began to clear, the ringing fading from his ears. He was back in desolate Manhattan again. There were vampires milling around, talking quietly, looking everything from pleased to concerned to confused. They were beginning to gravitate closer to him— no, to Simon, who was standing in front of him, trying to get his attention.

 

“Look, Magnus,” Simon said again, but Magnus realized suddenly that he didn’t want to hear it, and he didn’t want to be here.

 

“You have a clan to look after now,” he interrupted, and was relieved to hear that his voice sounded steady and calm. “Better get to it.”

 

Simon looked at him passively. “What are you going to do?”

 

“Go back to Paris,” he declared, and with that, departed, the crowed of vampires parting around him effortlessly.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He did return to Paris. But only briefly. He stopped by his home long enough to break up with his current boyfriend, a mundane French boy who could pull incredible sounds from a violin and who liked to write Magnus songs frequently. He was a good person with a good heart, and Magnus liked him a lot.

 

But he was never dating a mortal again. Not ever.

 

After Paris, he traveled to England and showed up unannounced at the doorstep of Tessa Gray. She was probably his oldest friend by now, and while he was sure nobody would understand, she had the best chance to. She’d greeted him with a smile and a kiss to the cheek, as she always did, before sweeping him inside for tea.

 

“Something’s bothering you,” she said as she sat his cup of tea down in front of where he sat at the kitchen table. She tilted her head, all sisterly concern. “What’s wrong?”

 

And like the flood of memories that had attacked him before, the words began tumbling from his lips before he could stop them. They burned in his throat as he spoke, each syllable, each sound raw and aching. It felt as if his heart were actively breaking in his chest for a love he’d lost not once, nor twice, but three times, the last one to death by his own hand.

 

Talking about it almost felt like losing her all over again.

 

Finally, he finished, the last painful word ringing in the silent room. She hadn’t sat down yet, but remained standing in front of him, and after a moment, he looked up at her. She didn’t look pitying or sympathetic, but she looked sad, so terribly sad, like her heart had been breaking with his. It reminded him of a period of time after her first husband had died, when she was staying with him in Paris, and she’d wake up screaming Will’s name, and he held her while she cried. Then a similar thing had happened roughly a century later, but then he’d been living in New York, and she’d been screaming Jem’s name instead.

  
She reached up, cupping his face in her hands and brushing her thumbs across his cheekbones. They caught tears he hadn’t even realized were falling. “I am so sorry,” was all she said to him, and really, that was all she need to say. He leaned forward, resting his forehead against her stomach, and as she stroked her hair and rubbed his back, he allowed himself to be completely consumed by the grief that had been clinging to him since the day he broke Clary Fray’s heart.


End file.
